The Murasaki-Wigglytuff Edition (carbon age: 1,000,000y)
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning Arceus created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And Arceus said,”Let there be light!” and there was light. And Arceus saw the light, that it was good; and Arceus divided the light from the darkness. And Arceus called the light Day, and the darkness Night, and it was evening and it was morning, the first day.
And Arceus said,”Let land rise up, and separate the empty from the waters.” It was so, and he called the space above the land and the sea Heaven. And it was evening, and it was morning;the second day.
And Arceus said,”Let the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.” He named the waters Kyogre, and the earth Groudon, and Arceus saw that it was good.
And Arceus said,”Let Groudon bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its own kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its own kind, whose seed was in itself, upon the earth. And Arceus saw that it was good.
But the good could not last. For Arceus knew that with all the vastness of His creation, he could not ensure the harmony of all of its elements. So it came to pass that the seas, Kyogre, developed first jealousy for the life of the land, Groudon, then enmity, then hatred. And it was evening, and it was morning; the third day.
For all of the third day, Kyogre and Groudon battled. The waters scoured the surface of the land, as the heat of the land did away with the water. Finally, on the evening of the third day, Arceus took away the powers of Groudon and Kyogre, for they had proven their misplaced intentions. These produced two orbs, the red containing those of the blue, and the blue containing those of the red. And these He cast away to the space where earth and heaven met. This airy space he named Rayquaza.
And Arceus said,”Let Rayquaza quell the conflict of Groudon and Kyogre, and let Rayquaza guard their powers safely away from them until they have learned humility.” And Rayquaza quelled the conflict of Groudon and Kyogre, and has guarded their powers from them for all of time...
Present
Hoenn Weather Institute, 5th Floor, East Wing
Skarm
“Wait...it’s not clear yet.” A Magma soldier walked by, cradling an assault rifle. He turned the corner, and Winona silently opened the door, gesturing for me to follow. We crouched against the corner, the man just on the other side, standing facing away from us. She signaled for me to wait, then jabbed the guard in the leg with a needle. He spun around, raising his gun, and then collapsed to the ground, fast asleep.
“Damn, that stuff was good! You mind giving me a little bit?”
“I only had 3 vials. That was one of them. Hurry up, throw that guy in the janitor’s closet so his buddies don’t find him.”
I slammed the closet shut and stuffed the key in my pocket. “Here, we can use this to listen in on their coms.”
“Good thinking.” Out of nowhere, the radio crackled, and I quickly held it up.
“Volcarona, this is Moltres. We’ve spotted a group of tangos approaching sector Mike Delta, how should we proceed?”.
Maxie’s voice filled the radio. “Smoke out Mike Delta and go thermal. If any of the tangoes enter, drop Voltorbs on them from the upper levels. Sniffers need 10 more minutes to complete the scan, so you need to keep them away from the circuit breakers in Mike Victor and central command in Charlie Romeo. Volcarona out.”
“Over and out.” The radio fell silent, but I turned mine on. “Archie, they’re going to smoke out the main entrance and drop bombs. You should probably go in a different way.” Static was my only answer. “He’s not answering.”
“Well, let’s hope he got the message. We have to move.”
“Winona, we need to make sure he’s not walking into a trap!”
“Skarm. Listen to me.” Winona grabbed my shoulders and looked deeply into my eyes. “You told me yourself he’s a murderer, that he killed two people right in front of your eyes. These Aqua guys are just as bad. If we let them kill each other off, then we’ll have an easier time later.”
“I still don’t like it. I thought we were on the same team.”
“WE are. But he isn’t our responsibility. He can take care of himself.”
“Fine. I hope it weighs on your conscience if he gets killed.”
“It probably won’t. But it’s good of you to worry.”
I glanced at the map on the wall. “So you’re really just going to leave him?”
“Yeah. Are you gonna go on about this all day? Or are we going to plant the bug and get out of here?”
“I just don’t think we should hang him out to dry, but I guess it’s your call. Anyways, I was trying to get a fix on where their headquarters is. If they’re using military alphabet, Charlie Romeo would be short for CR...Ahh, there it is! Climate Research! That’s on the third floor, east wing of the building.” I started down the stairs, Winona close behind me. Both sides of the hallway were clear, and I turned the corner, racing towards the east wing. The signs marked our path, where thankfully we didn’t run into any Magma grunts.
Until we found the voices around the corner.
“When are you going to let us go? We have research to conduct, tests to complete! This is madness!”
Another voice rang out, and I stopped short. “When Maxie has the data we need, we will leave. Our downloads are almost complete.”
“But what data are you searching for? What in the world are you trying to find looking for heat in the middle of the ocean?” Winona slammed into me from behind, throwing me into a panic. The voices were growing closer; they had almost reached us.
“I don’t expect you to understand, Mr. Finch. But rest assured that this is a goal we have been pursuing ever since the Splitting, and we intend to pursue it to its conclusion.” I quickly grabbed one of the syringes from Winona’s shoulder belt, just as the Magma soldier turned the corner.
“What the HELL?!” he yelled, backing away from me and reaching for the bulge in his jacket. I tackled him, slamming us both to the ground. I jabbed his calf with the needle and he went limp, but not before two rounds whizzed over my head and embedded themselves in the marble walls. The sharp reports echoed down the halls-they were sure to bring attention soon.
“Who are you?”
“Doesn’t matter. What does is where Maxie’s keeping the rest of the hostages, and what he’s looking for.”
“He’s looking for something involving our global warming data. Specifically, he’s pulled several satellites out of orbit to scan an anomaly he found in his initial scans. An entire 10 square kilometers of the ocean with an ambient temperature 10 degrees hotter than the surrounding waters.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“We told him it was normal, just the hotspot that created the White Volcano. But that only made him more excited. He pulled the satellites, and they’re giving him a much more detailed scan then we had before.”
I decided to drop the subject. “And all the other hostages?”
“They’re in the command center running the scans.”
“Thanks. Now get out of here and find somewhere to hide. We have about 5 minutes until this guy wakes up and raises the alarm.”
The man ran off down the hall. “Winona, what do you think they’re looking for?”
“There are a few things. They could be looking for some rare Pokemon species that likes the heat. That’s the least ridiculous thing I can think of.”
“Why would they go to all this effort for that?”
“They could be looking for another volcano to trigger.”
“No. First one was too much risk for practically no gain at all.”
“Or...they could be trying to find Groudon.”
I laughed. “Trying to lighten the mood, huh?”
“No, I’m serious.” My chuckles petered out. “Ever read the Murasaki?”
“Oh, come on, that’s just Mew tales from Johto. They’re not real.”
“The scientific evidence is pretty good to indicate that Groudon and Kyogre are real, even if the world was spawned in a Big Bang and not just created by Arceus.”
“But since we’ve never actually FOUND them, they’re not real. And believe me, people have tried.”
“Maxie is trying too. If he wants to expand the landmass, awaking Groudon would be perfect. Especially since thanks to the marvels of modern science, he could theoretically lock Groudon away in a pokeball.”
“No pokeball could hold Groudon. He’d be much too powerful.” The man on the floor started stirring, and I gave him a quick kick in the head. He slumped again. “Let’s just stop them so we don’t have to worry about the logistics of the whole thing.”
We turned the corner, where the map showed that we were one hallway away from the door. Another quick sprint later and we were there, standing on opposite sides of the open door.
“What’s the plan?” I whispered.
“I don’t know. One syringe isn’t going to be enough for the whole lot of them.”
“Well, we can’t just stand here! Eventually they’re going to find us, or the guy in the hallway is going to wake up and get on his radio. We need to either go in in the next thirty seconds, or we need to back out.”
“I didn’t come all this way to back out. We could have our pokemon create a diversion...”
“Won’t work. Magma will just shoot them and we’ll be back at square one.” Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. “Winona, do you have something you can cover your ears with?”
“Yeah, I can use my earmuffs.”
“You carry EARMUFFS around with you?!”
“Get to the point, get to the point! They’re for flying up high, and it gets chilly.”
“You send out your Altaria, I send out Swablu. We have them both sing, and if your Altaria’s voice does the same thing that Swablu’s does...”
“Then it’ll put them all out...I’m in. Make it fast.” We both sent out our pokemon. “Can you two sing all of the people in that room to sleep?”
The two of them broke out in song and I immediately stuffed my fingers in my ears. Soon enough, we heard snores from inside the room, and we silenced the two birds and tiptoed in. Winona silently pulled the bug from her pocket and slid it under Maxie’s jacket collar. But it turned out we had a problem.
“Winona, where are the scientists?” I whispered.
“They’re not in here?”
“Nowhere to be found. But, while we’re here...” I slid a Magma grunt’s gun out of its holster. “Why are we even bothering with the bug? Why don’t we just shoot the bastard right now and be done with it?” I held the gun out to her, handle first, but she hesitated.
“If we shoot him in cold blood, we’re no better then he is. Plus, if we shoot him...it’ll wake up the rest of the Magma grunts. We’ll have to shoot them all too. Do you want the blood of those 10 on our hands as well?” Winona took the gun from me.
“He’s trying to set off a volcano, or unleash some massive mythical creature. Do you know how many lives we could save if we shot him now? It would be much greater then the 10 or so we’d be taking in here.”
“Skarm, there’s nothing I want to do more then to shoot him right now.” Winona tossed the gun on the floor, far away from us. “I’m just so confused, Skarm. He killed my father, killed countless other people, set off a volcano. I SHOULD shoot him, I’d be RIGHT to shoot him. But I can’t do it...not even knowing that this is the only chance I’ll get...I can’t murder someone, not even to save hundreds of innocent lives. I still believe in the police and the courts, as useless and corrupt as they seem.”
“Then give me the gun, I’ll do it. He’s too dangerous, Winona. A month from now, there’ll be another disaster, hundreds or thousands dead, and it’ll be our fault. Because we had the chance to end it, right here, right now, and we didn’t take it. So, with that in mind, you’re just going to walk away? Don’t take the chance. Do you think he’d hesitate for a second to shoot you or me if it was reversed?”
“I know I wouldn’t. Now you’re about to find out.” Maxie spun around in his chair, a machine pistol held in his lap. He used his free hand to yank out a pair of earplugs and pocket them. “I always bring them whenever I think they’ll be gunfire. And there’s going to be quite a bit in a second.” Winona started towards the door, but halted when a spray of bullets sent sparks flying from a computer console. “Before I shoot you, there’s a few things I need to know. So stay where you are, answer my questions, and I’ll make your trips to meet Giratina short and painless.”
“Fuck off.” we both said. The Magma grunts around us were starting to awake around us. Then, Archie came in from the other door, Aqua grunts following him.
“Archie, you’re just in time!”
“Yes, yes, he is. Did you really think you two and him were allies? Going to work together to take me down?” Maxie paused. “We made our own deal. We take the atmospheric data, give both of us the scans we want, then eliminate the witnesses and go our seperate ways.”
“From the looks of it, our two little lovebirds are the last people who know what’s going on.”
“Excellent.” Maxie turned to the collected Magma and Aqua grunts. “Ready your weapons. As soon as we figure out how much the League and the police know, we shoot them and leave. I want them unrecognizable.”
“Yes, sir!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Winona reaching for a device on her belt, and briefly wondered what it was. She pressed a few buttons and glanced at me.
I nodded back. What else was I going to do? As much hope as she had, I really didn’t think there was a way out of this one.
The computer beeped, and Maxie glanced over. “SCANS JAMMED? What?”
“You want to know how much the police know? They just jammed your satellites. They’ve got the building surrounded. You can try to shoot your way out if you want, but then you’ll graduate from some random war vet with a bunch of followers to a serious threat. Especially now that they’ve heard this entire conversation.”
“Aqua grunts, go check the entrances. We’re calling her bluff. Magma grunts, keep your weapons trained on them.” Archie ordered. Soon we were alone in the room with 10 Magma grunts, Archie, and Maxie.
“You know, Winona, you’ve really got a lot of spunk. There’s no quit in you, unlike a few of my grunts. If you weren’t such a white knight of righteousness, you could’ve joined me.” Winona didn’t respond, clearly defeated.
“You know, Maxie, you’re really setting a new standard for being a complete douchebag. Maybe you should rob banks instead and set up a yearly prize. It’s much better then being hung up on the sandcastles you built as a kid that got flooded when the tide came in.” Cracking jokes was my only defense. What did I have to lose? We were 30 seconds away from getting shot anyways.
“You should be a standup comedian, Skarm. Pity your jokes won’t ever be heard by anyone except me and these guys.”
I had one last idea. Obviously Swablu and Altaria knew to hide themselves when the grunts went through, or we would have heard shots. But would they understand what I wanted them to do? “I don’t know about that. I’ve made plenty of people laugh. That’s not my real talent, though.”
“Hopefully it’s not surviving gunshots, or this is going to be a really painful 5 minutes for you.”
“No, I’ve really got some great musical talent. In fact, if there’s anything I want to do before you kill me, it’s to SING, just ONE MORE TIME. Even if my audience is you and your retard patrol.” I heard Swablu’s voice coming from somewhere behind me, and my hands started reaching for my ears. But I was confused when two more voices chimed in. Weren’t there only two? Or maybe I’m just tired...
Tired? I snapped my hands to my ears, and I snapped back awake. Everyone else in the room had fallen back asleep, even Maxie. Guess the earplugs weren’t working for him this time.
“Where did the third voice come from?” I asked as I sprinted out with Winona, withdrawing Swablu as I ran.
“It was me.” I almost stopped dead in the hallway. “Don’t look so surprised, I’ve been practicing that for a while. Remember when I did a few chirps in Granite Cave that other time?”
“Well, that was just a few chirps. But after a few months, I could do entire bird songs. It’s just another way for me to build a better bond with my pokemon” We ran past an intersection, and then gunshots echoed as bullets splintered the wall behind us.
“Run! Get to the window!” Altaria smashed through the floor to ceiling window. We jumped out behind it before I had time to realize that I was three stories up. Altaria swooped back around, we grabbed its talons, almost yanking my shoulders out of their sockets, and flew off into the raging storm.